Meeting You
by Higuchimon
Summary: Taichi's never met a blond before, but he's heard lots of stories. Yamato just wants a peaceful trip with the brother he hasn't seen in too long. Neither one of them is going to get exactly what they expect, but they just might one day end up with what they need.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.  
 **Fandom:** Digimon Adventure  
 **Title:** Meeting You  
 **Romance:** Taichi x Yamato/Yamato x Taichi  
 **Word Count:** chapter: 2,500||story: 2,500  
 **Genre:** Friendship, Romance|| **Rated:** PG  
 **Challenge:** Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, G5, two-shot; Advent Calendar 2015, day #9, roll dice for chapter amount (2-shot); TaiYama/YamaTai Week on Tumblr  
 **Notes:** This starts pre-episode 1 of Digimon Adventure and the 'shippiness will be very mild. After all, they barely know each other. But the prompt is 'first impressions'. I also did a bit of tweaking to how long they were there before going to the Digital World: at least a few days.  
 **Summary:** Taichi's never met a blond before, but he's heard lots of stories. Yamato just wants a peaceful trip with the brother he hasn't seen in too long. Neither one of them is going to get exactly what they expect, but they just might one day end up with what they need.

* * *

Taichi caught a glimpse of hair like new minted gold and leaned forward, trying to figure out just who it was. He knew there weren't any blonds in _his_ class, but he'd seen one or two in the school halls. He'd just never had the chance to actually stop and talk to one of them. Maybe this trip would change that. He kind of hoped it did. It would make it a lot less boring in his opinion.

At the moment, too many people filled the bus for him to get more than the occasional glance of that bright hair. To make it worse, it was too noisy for him to even attempt to guess which one of the multitude of voices belonged to the mysterious blond.

Maybe he'd ask Sora when they finally got to the camp. She probably knew who it was. She was the kind of person who knew who everyone was and if somehow she didn't know, then she probably knew who _would_ know.

He leaned back in his seat again and tossed his favorite ball up and down. He didn't have much else that he could do. If Hikari had been with them, then he could've at least looked after her a little. But it was probably better that she wasn't. Even if she hadn't been sick now, she got sick so easily that being around all of these kids would do something to her. She was better off at home anyway.

A low laugh, rippling and warm, floated through the air, catching his attention and making him look around again. He thought it came from in front of him, the same direction that the blond was in. He couldn't figure out who this person was either. It was too much to hope for that the blond and the person who laughed were the same. Just trying to figure it out gave him something to do with his time, at least.

He'd had a lot of bad luck on this trip so far. While he knew his other classmates, he was really only close to Sora and Koushirou, and both of them weren't around for him to talk to. Sora sat farther back in the bus, talking to someone he didn't know, and Koushirou was, as usual, buried up to his ears in his laptop.

The people in the seats nearest him spent their time babbling about some card game he didn't recognize, talking monsters and attack points and whatever. Taichi wrinkled his nose. If they were talking real monsters, he would've been into that. He wished he could see a real monster.

He wished there were real monsters for him to see.

But without his friends and without real monsters, the only thing he focused on was that glimpse of blond hair and that sound of a laugh. Both of those would be the most interesting things that could happen on this entire trip.

 _Maybe I should take a nap?_ He wouldn't be the only one doing so. But he wasn't that tired and who knew, maybe if he stayed awake, the blond would wander down this way for some reason. He'd never seen an actual blond for more than a few minutes and he kind of wondered if they were as cute as people said they were. So if he closed his eyes, he could miss out on a chance to meet one.

Yeah, this trip was not going to be one of the highlights of his school years.

He let his head thump back on the seat and closed his eyes anyway. He wasn't napping. He was just trying to make the time pass by faster until they got to the campsite.

In all truth, Taichi couldn't have said if he'd fallen asleep or not. But somewhere along the line, music filtered into his mind. It wasn't a song like off of a radio or a music player of some kind. Someone was playing something. It took him several minutes before he clicked to the fact it was a harmonica.

 _Whoa. Someone's good._

He cracked his eyes open enough to confirm two things: there were still too many people doing too much moving for him to identify anyone who wasn't in his direct line of sight and no one in his direct line of sight was playing a harmonica, or anything else. A couple of them were leaning forward, probably as caught by the music as he was, but that was all he could be sure of.

Taichi hated this bus and he wasn't all that fond of the trip itself either now. It would have to be better at the campsite, because then he could wander around and find the blond (or blonds, depending on how many were actually there) and find out who played the harmonica. People wouldn't be all in his way like this.

"Ishida's really good," someone a seat or two ahead of him said. "I wish I could play like that."

 _Ishida._ The name rang faintly familiar to Taichi but he couldn't put a face to it. Definitely not someone on his team, that was for sure. He knew every last one of them by name, face, position, and skill level.

He didn't have much time to figure out anything else, because only a short while after that, the bus came to a halt. He _still_ didn't get a chance to figure out who Ishida was, or where the blond was, let alone the nice laugh he'd heard, because everyone in front of him hurried off as fast as they could. The most he saw was another glimpse of that head of blond hair.

A hand closed around his arm and he turned to see Sora looking at him. "Come on, let's get off of here," she said with a small smile that he returned at once. "I want to stretch my legs!"

He wasn't going to complain about that in the slightest, hurrying off the moment there was enough room for him to do so. Sora kept pace with him and he wasn't surprised to find Koushirou not that far away either.

"Hey, Sora?" Taichi decided he didn't have too much pride not to ask. "Do you know anyone named 'Ishida'?"

Sora blinked and tilted her head, thinking. "You mean Ishida Yamato? I've never met him but I think he's in one of the other classes. Why?"

"No reason. I heard someone mention the name and I was curious, that's all." Taichi played nonchalance for all he was worth. He wasn't all that good at it, and he wasn't surprised to find Sora giving him a speculative look of her own. "What?"

"Nothing." A small smile played about the corner of her lips. "I think he was the one playing the harmonica, actually."

Well, that matched up with what he'd heard, at least. He nodded, hurrying toward the cabin that he knew would be theirs during the trip. They would share it with a couple of people from the other class in their grade while they were there and he wanted to make certain he got a good bunk while he had a chance.

He got a little ahead of Sora and Koushirou, but he heard two sets of footsteps joining him not long after he entered the cabin and started to check out which was the best bunk. Sora wouldn't be sleeping here, of course, but he turned to suggest that he and Koushirou find bunks next to each other.

The words caught in his throat when he met a pair of sparkling blue eyes, rich as the sky and deep as the sea. He'd never noticed eyes like that in his life, though he'd seen a few people with blue eyes. Then he saw the head of glimmering gold hair above the eyes and blinked a couple of times, trying to wrap his head around the fact he'd seen a true blond at last.

"Are you sure it's all right that I stay with you, big brother?" A young voice asked and Taichi managed to get his brain thinking enough to notice that the blond had a smaller edition next to him. The two looked enough like each other that he kind of wondered if they were related, but all words still stuck in his throat for the moment. The mention of 'big brother' didn't completely register, either.

"Sure it is. No one's going to mind, Takeru." The owner of that hair and those eyes looked at Taichi, one smooth eyebrow going up. "You don't mind, do you?

Taichi tried to remember how to talk. He'd never, ever in his life reacted like this to anyone. He shook his head hard. So the guy was cute. It wasn't like Taichi was a troll or something himself. "Of course not." Why should he, anyway? "Uh, who are you guys, anyway?" And where were Sora and Koushirou?

The second question was at least partially answered when Koushirou stepped through the doorway, laptop tucked under his arm. He nodded at Taichi, who managed a nod back, and went to the nearest empty bunk to flip open the computer once again, losing himself in it in a matter of moments.

 _I need to get a soccer team together and get him away from that for a while,_ Taichi told himself before he looked back at the two blonds, neither of which had answered his question.

"I'm Takaishi Takeru!" The little blond piped up when he saw Taichi looking back at them. "I'm in the second grade!" The school he named wasn't one that Taichi was familiar with but since this was supposed to be a trip for multiple schools and grades that didn't surprise him.

"Ishida Yamato," the taller one said, looking away at the same time. Taichi lit up at once.

"You're Ishida? Hey, I heard you playing your harmonica on the bus. You're really good!"

Ishida only gave a mild shrug, moving over to the bed next to the one Taichi had already mentally marked as his. He tossed a small bag onto it and then looked back at Takaishi. "Come on, let's check things out."

He didn't even look at Taichi again as the two of them headed out. Taichi stared after them, not sure if he wanted to demand answers on why Ishida barely seemed to tolerate his existence or just ignore the both of them.

"Taichi?" Ignoring seemed the better option, especially as Sora poked her head into the cabin. "Hey, we've got enough people to play a game with. Want to?"

That made a lot more sense than trying to fuss over someone he'd just met, no matter how pretty and strange their hair or how nice their eyes. He tapped Koushirou on the shoulder. "You heard her! We've got a game going!"

At least Koushirou listened to him.

But if there was one thing in his life that Taichi had never been able to resist, it was a challenge. And finding out what made Ishida Yamato tick was a challenge.

* * *

It was also one that he had no idea of how to solve, because Yamato was probably one of the few people in the universe who didn't like to play soccer and who wasn't interested in just hanging out and the most time he normally spent around other people, Taichi quickly found out, was when they were eating, and he tended to leave as soon as he could after that anyway.

He did spend a lot of time with Takeru, but Taichi couldn't get a grip on why. Even the few people he met who were in Yamato's class didn't know. All Taichi could guess was that they were friends. He'd heard 'big brother' but guessed that was an honorary thing.

He learned a couple of things fast enough, though. One was that Yamato also possessed that silvery laugh that he'd heard on the bus, which meant of the three people he'd thought he'd be interested to meet, Yamato was all of them: blond, laughter, and music. Taichi didn't think that close to fair.

At least there were other things to do around here than get annoyed over someone who paid him absolutely no attention at all. Playing soccer came first and foremost, as did just hanging out with Sora or Koushirou or some of the other people he'd met here who would pay attention to him. Kido Jou wasn't that bad of a guy, if kind of stuffy. Sora kept wanting to introduce him to someone she'd met on the bus, who was in the year beneath theirs, Tachikawa Mimi. There were a couple of others, including one girl who apparently was in Yamato's class, but Taichi didn't remember all of them.

He had enough to do with Yamato being annoying enough to keep floating around in the back of his mind, whether Taichi wanted him there or not.

And he didn't. Not at all. Not for a single moment. No matter how interesting the guy was. Why was he blond? Foreign relatives most likely, unless he dyed his hair, but he didn't really come across as the type. Why did he play the harmonica? Why was he just the way that he was?

Nope. Taichi didn't want to know the answers to any of those questions. He didn't look for Yamato when mealtime came and he definitely didn't check the audience during games to see if he'd shown up to watch just once.

He never did, the jerk.

Sometimes Taichi did catch a quick flash of that hair - Yamato and Takeru turned out to be the only blonds at camp - but by the time he got where it was, Yamato wasn't there anymore. That just made Taichi even more annoyed. Was Yamato avoiding him on purpose? What had he done?

Yamato sleeping one bed over didn't make it any better. Most of the other kids chattered until they fell asleep. Yamato pulled his blanket over his head and was out like a light in no time at all. Taichi could not help but feel a little offended.

A lot offended. Maybe. Sometimes. Not at all. Not really.

As long as so many kids were around and there were so many places Yamato could slip off to in order, Taichi knew he wasn't going to get his answers. He wouldn't have time when they left here. So it was going to be now or never.

And it looked as if it were going to be never, since Yamato had a particular talent for hiding.

Taichi didn't at all expect to have everything whirl out of control because it began to snow It was August. Who expected snow in August? Who expected those weird devices to appear or a tidal wave to come out of nowhere, when they were so far from the ocean that they couldn't even smell the salt of it?

Not Taichi, that was for sure.

 **To Be Continued**

 **Note:** Thank you for reading and I hope that you enjoyed the chapter. Please let me know what you thought of it if at all possible.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.  
 **Fandom:** Digimon Adventure  
 **Title:** Meeting You  
 **Romance:** Taichi x Yamato/Yamato x Taichi  
 **Word Count:** chapter: 2,500||story: 5,000  
 **Genre:** Friendship, Romance|| **Rated:** PG  
 **Challenge:** Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, G5, two-shot; Advent Calendar 2015, day #9, roll dice for chapter amount (2-shot); TaiYama/YamaTai Week on Tumblr  
 **Summary:** Taichi's never met a blond before, but he's heard lots of stories. Yamato just wants a peaceful trip with the brother he hasn't seen in too long. Neither one of them is going to get exactly what they expect, but they just might one day end up with what they need.

* * *

Things changing didn't really get under Yamato's skin all that much. He'd seen it happen before. He'd seen it happen so many times that he did his level best just to roll with it all. He couldn't stop any of them happening so he didn't even bother to try.

So, having this weird little football with a spike on its head telling him that they were partners and this was the Digital World didn't even bother him for more than the initial few seconds. They'd gone to another universe through a tidal wave. Whatever. He needed to find Takeru and then they could start working on finding a way home.

Finding Takeru wasn't that difficult, since he ended up being only one little clearing away from where Yamato himself woke up, and he had one of those little creatures – Digimon – watching over him too.

Finding a way home _was_ difficult and it wasn't made any easier by Yagami Taichi's existence.

Ever since they'd met first in the cabin at the camp, Taichi got underneath Yamato's skin more than anything had in a long, long time. The way that he stared at Yamato – especially his hair – wasn't all that unusual, as much as it irked him anyway. Being one of the very few blonds in school meant he got looks like that more than he didn't.

But something in Taichi's expression made him shift and want to look somewhere else even more than he usually did. Taichi's large brown eyes were ones that he thought he could get lost in. He kept himself from even trying, though. He had Takeru to take care of. He didn't have _time_ to make friends. He didn't even want to even if he'd had the time.

That didn't stop Taichi from living almost entirely within Yamato's sphere of awareness, as much as Yamato would've wanted otherwise. They slept in the same cabin, only one bed apart, and Yamato mastered the art of pretending to be asleep when he really lay there listening to Taichi grumbling and tossing and turning and longed to find some sort of large mallet to use to whack the guy into sleep.

He'd heard Taichi complaining to Takenouchi Sora that 'some people' couldn't even be bothered to come watch soccer games. He focused all of his attention on his meals and didn't let on that he watched at least a few of them and knew very well how good Taichi was. He just had to make sure Takeru didn't try to get involved in them. His brother wasn't in any shape to play around with kids three years older than he was.

But soccer games and faking sleep weren't on the schedule at the moment. Finding a way from the Digital World to home kept up _all_ of their time, even when everything began to look more and more as if there wouldn't be a way home any time soon.

That did leave something Yamato wasn't always certain that he wanted: time to get to know the people he was trapped here with.

Most of them weren't all that bad. He thought he could get along with Sora, at least, and Jou wasn't always wrong with being nervous and cautious. He wasn't sure what to think about Koushirou or Mimi. He didn't want Takeru there at all, but if his brother had to be, at least he was there to take care of him.

But then there was Taichi. Taichi, whose existence shimmered in a way that Yamato hadn't ever been able to block out no matter how hard he tried. Taichi, who didn't ever even think about thinking about anything but went with whatever decision jumped into the forefront of his mind, practically grinning the whole time.

 _I don't know if I want to smack him or just sit back with popcorn._ They had to stick together to get through this, a fact that grew more and more obvious the longer they were there. They weren't much of a team, but they were the only ones they had here, they and their Digimon.

He knew Taichi liked to hear him play his harmonica. That little tidbit had been hard to miss, given how the other watched him play that first night in the Digital World. Yamato didn't play very often where other people could hear him in the first place.

The only exception he ever made was for Takeru, like on the bus down to the campsite. Takeru asked him to do it then, more than a bit uncomfortable with so many strangers around, and Yamato couldn't have resisted.

Here it gave him something to do and a way to vent out everything he didn't want anyone else knowing. Taichi never said a word about what he thought about what he heard. He just listened.

So one or two nights, when he knew Taichi was awake and no one else but Takeru might be, Yamato slipped just enough away from camp so it looked as if he were trying to be alone without actually being so, and gave Taichi small private concerts. He found he liked having someone listen who just _listened_ and enjoyed it.

It wasn't so easy to do after Devimon stuck his nose into things, sending them scattered all over the place. That was the first smack in the face for them all to realize that this wasn't just a quick trip to some weird world where they'd be home with fabulous stories to tell.

This could cost them their lives. It _did_ cost Angemon's life, and Yamato hated anything that would bring his brother the slightest bit of pain. Takeru wasn't ready for that. He hadn't ever been.

But Yamato couldn't stop it from happening and that struck a blow deep within him. He couldn't protest Takeru from everything, no matter how hard he tried.

The fact Taichi seemed to understand and accept this better than he did sent thick spurts of acid-green jealousy coursing through his veins. He didn't want this to happen. He was the older brother here. From the conversations around the campfire, most of them were either only children or younger siblings. Only Taichi had a little sister.

Only Taichi, of all their team, could make Yamato so angry that he stopped thinking at all and just wanted to pound the guy's face in until there wasn't anything left of it and in the next moment do something that made Yamato never want to let him out of his sight again.

 _How can one person do that to me?_ He'd never felt like that about anyone before. He had no idea of what to do about it now that Taichi had. Never going near him again wasn't an option. Not only would they probably all die if they separated like that, but the thought of never seeing Taichi again as long as he lived sent something worse than jealousy all through him.

Yamato didn't know what to call it but he kind of wished he knew more about it, just to know if it was something he really wanted to feel.

The deepest parts of his brain, the part that had only slowly begun to stir in the last few months, told him he wanted to feel this and other things but Yamato refused to even listen to them. What did they know? This was Yagami Taichi, not some girl!

Those parts of his brain merely gave an amused chuckle and continued to stir from their sleep anytime Yamato could spare the time to notice anything new and interesting, or familiar and enticing, about Taichi.

And then there was the time when he thought he might not see Taichi ever again, and it had nothing to do with arguments between them or the slow stir of emotions he hadn't yet put a name to.

How dare Taichi do this. How could he have even _thought_ about it? Granted, from the last couple of months spent almost entirely in his company, Yamato knew that Taichi and thinking things through at best nodded acknowledgment to one another from across a crowded street, but where had he _gone_? Was he ever going to come back here?

Were they going to find a way to do what he did? Had he gone home? Or had he just been thrown somewhere else in this confusing world?

Yamato tried hard not to let anyone else see what coursed through his mind. They all worried about Taichi and Agumon but Yamato refused to let anyone know how much his thoughts lingered on _Taichi_. Those ridiculous brown eyes, filled with unmatched determination. That hair, that _rat's nest_ of hair, tangled and dirty more than it wasn't, almost to the point Yamato wanted to drag him to the nearest river whenever they came by one and scrub it until he was satisfied. The feel of Taichi's callused hands, that handful of times when they'd touched one another.

He didn't need to think about all of that, but he did anyway, until he could stand it no longer, and he decided it was time to go search for where their so-called leader might be. Taichi, he decided as he trudged his way along, needed a firm lesson in how not to fly off into strange portals and not learn how to at least give a forwarding address.

Yamato had lost people in his life before, and come close to losing others – Takeru – others. He wasn't going to let Taichi join that list.

That would've been a lot easier if he'd had any idea of how to make sure Taichi _didn't_. Unfortunately, life failed to come with an instruction manual and the Digital World hadn't corrected that.

But some things remained the same no matter the world and that meant only one thing: when Taichi _did_ show up again, it was at the worst possible time and as much as Yamato wanted to shake him from head to toe and tell him never to do that kind of thing again, he couldn't actually do it.

He thought about punching him out but that wasn't on the agenda, either. But Yamato put it on his mental list to do when he got the chance. Yagami Taichi was the kind of guy who needed to get punched out or some sense punched into him – Yamato wasn't all that particular on which it was, so long as he was the one who did it, because other people just were not allowed to hurt taichi. That was a pleasure and a duty that Yamato reserved for himself.

It was also something he didn't let Taichi know, because Taichi would just get all _weird_ about it and as far as Yamato concerned, their lives had topped ten thousand on the scale of weirdness and he didn't want anything else to tip things one way or the other.

 _As if I knew what one way or the other was. And which way I'd want it if it did,_ Yamato groused to himself. Thinking about Taichi and all the millions of ways everything could and did go wrong in their lives occupied many a moment when he had nothing else to do. He wasn't sure either if he liked those times. For one, he got in a lot of time thinking about Taichi, when he wasn't fretting about himself and Takeru and the fate of the worlds they had to protect and the enemies they had to fight.

Which tended to lead him right back around to Taichi and how he was such an idiot.

Yamato figured out years ago that life wasn't fair. This just made it all the more certain.

Though despite how much he found himself annoyed because his thoughts drifted back to Taichi, like it or not, he disliked – liked – looked forward to – hated – didn't know what to think about the times when they stood awake together, one on guard, the other not wanting to sleep – or whatever excuse whoever it was came up with this time. Sometimes they didn't bother and just sat awake together, watching the constellations that were growing more and more familiar spin over them.

"I think I want to call that one Miko," Taichi said, waving at one of them. Yamato tilted his head and stared upward, squinting.

"Why that?" It didn't look like anything that he would've called Miko.

"Because that's our cat and it looks like a cat to me from here."

Yamato rolled his eyes, tilted his head the other way, and shrugged. "If you say so." He didn't think it was worth arguing about. He'd rather just sit here and enjoy the silence and the warm feel of Gabumon half-dozing next to him, Takeru on the other side.

He made a mental note that his list did not include Taichi, of course. Why would it have? Just because they spent at least an hour or so every night like this didn't mean anything. He didn't anticipate it. Didn't find it one of the more relaxing times of the day. Didn't enjoy it far more than he had before Taichi vanished and he'd spent months with a cold empty place inside and outside of himself.

"You know, I'm going to smack you one day," he said, half-drowsing – or at least he told himself that. "For going off like that after Etemon."

"That wasn't my idea!" Taichi protested. "Besides, if you smack me, I'd just smack you back."

Yamato smothered a yawn. "Sure you would." He still kind of owed Taichi for that fight they'd had way back when, in the snow. That hadn't been fair at all. Yamato knew perfectly well he could beat Taichi any time he wanted to, so long as he wasn't distraced by Takeru not being around.

Taichi made a noise Yamato couldn't understand and decided not to worry about. It sounded sort of like 'any time you want' but Yamato didn't think now was a good time. He liked the quiet too much.

Yamato didn't notice when his eyes began to slide shut, the sneaking fingers of sleep slowly folding around him.

He did, however, notice the moment when Taichi's hand touched his own and stayed like that. Neither of them said anything. Yamato had no idea of what he should say in the first place.

So he moved his fingers enough so that he held Taichi's hand back and tingled from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. One single question managed to work its way out of his mouth.

"Have you ever had a haircut in your entire life? Because if not, I know some people. They'd be glad to help you tame the beast."

"Why am I friends with you again?"

"We're friends?" Yamato teased him. "No one told me that."

But their hands didn't move, and Yamato ignored Taichi's grumbling in favor of that warm touch, and he let the future take care of itself.

 **The End**

 **Note:** Thank you for reading and I hope that you enjoyed the chapter. Please let me know what you thought of it if at all possible.


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